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Fritos, Pogos and junk food of every description might soon be able to add a shimmer of health to their glossy packaging if Health Canada enacts proposed rule changes regarding the fortification of edibles.

And the new right to add minerals and vitamins to such demonstrably detrimental fare can only worsen this country's obesity crisis, many health experts warn.

"If you're already a junk food eater you'll eat more of it ... you can have these chips because they're `heart healthy,'" says Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, an Ottawa obesity specialist and longtime critic of the proposal. Worse yet, he says, it could encourage people who have been trying to eat right to succumb to the junk food temptation.

"There's the very busy person who has been trying hard to cook meals with whole foods properly for their whole family," says Freedhoff, founder of Ottawa's Bariatric Medical Institute.

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"They could decide, `Why should I bother doing this when I can get the healthy Pogo stick with the fortified this, that and the other.'"

The proposal does not specifically mention which foods can be fortified; it does, however, list those that cannot be. These include flour and bread (whose fortification is already set), pasta, sugars, syrups, alcoholic beverages, milk and butter.

Also on the regulated list would be fresh produce, meats, fish poultry, eggs, fresh brewed coffee and tea, and infant foods and diet formulations. But Freedhoff says those restrictions fly out the window when any of these products are mixed or battered or otherwise processed.

"They specifically mention the foods that are not allowed to be fortified, and then everything else is fair game," he says.

If a company mixes any of these staples into a Pogo stick, for example, they can fortify at will, he says. "And it's `at your discretion, food industry.' I'm not sure about you, but certainly I've never known the food industry to have much in the way of discretion."

University of Toronto nutrition expert Valerie Tarasuk says the food industry has argued the regulations would simply harmonize Canadian products with those sold in the United States, which has long had liberal fortification rules.

But Nancy Croitoru, head of Food and Consumer Products of Canada, says the industry here has no desire to follow the U.S. lead or fortify junk foods.

"Nobody is talking about adding niacin to Pogo sticks," says Croitoru, whose group represents most of Canada's food and beverage companies. "We're not looking at fortification of foods that have no nutrient value."

Instead, the industry wants to do things like add calcium to orange juice "for the kid who is allergic to milk."

Products would be fortified only where "sound credible science" showed they should be. "We're not saying we have to do everything the United States does," Croitoru says. "What we're saying is, `Let's take the best practices from around the world, but let's get moving.'"

Health Canada did not respond to interview requests, but said in an email that focus groups have shown people would not consume more junk food if it were fortified.

"In these focus groups, we were told that Canadians are unlikely to choose foods of limited nutritional value over healthy food simply on the basis of fortification," the email said. The response said current junk-food consumers might switch brands to the fortified versions if the regulations were enacted.

The proposed regulatory changes – backed by the country's food industry – have lain in limbo since 2005, when they were published in a lengthy Health Canada document. The agency will not say what the status of the proposal is now. A spokesperson for Health Minister Leona Aglukark said yesterday that the minister was reserving any decision on the proposal until she'd been fully briefed.

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